


Radio Silence

by eggswrites



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:05:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11109003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggswrites/pseuds/eggswrites
Summary: AU where nothing went to shit, it was just a basic ass year and Evan made friends that’s it.im 100% projecting onto Evan sorry for my bad writing i wrote it in like an hour





	Radio Silence

**Author's Note:**

> AU where nothing went to shit, it was just a basic ass year and Evan made friends that’s it.
> 
> im 100% projecting onto Evan sorry for my bad writing i wrote it in like an hour

School had finally let out for the summer which usually meant one thing for the newly-graduated seniors: make as many memories as fast as you can with your high school friends. Because come next year, you won’t even remember your best friend’s name. For most kids, that was the whole plan. 

Except for Evan. 

For once in his life, he had friends. He had met Alana, which led him to being formally introduced to Zoe, which led to him meeting Connor. They had a made a small friend group of sorts, all of them and Jared. Hell, they even had a group chat! Like… a group chat that required a whole different app to talk in! Evan had never been in a group chat like that, ever. It ended up being a chat usually used for school-related activities. The first day of Evan’s second week of summer, he scrolled through it out of boredom. It gave some nostalgia, to a time when people actually talked to him, or at least in the same space as him. 

April 10th at 11:07 PM  
cool kid kleinman: did anyone do williams’ hw  
the ghost of connor m: no  
cool kid kleinman: then why did you answer???  
the ghost of connor m: because i didn’t want to leave you hanging  
guess i should next time  
cool kid kleinman: wow rude  
Tree Boy: I’ll send it to you, Jared.  
cool kid kleinman: nice  
Tree Boy: Also, can you change my name back to what I had it set to?  
April 11th at 1:53am  
Tree Boy is now Evan Handsoap.  
April 11th at 6:43am  
the ghost of connor m: you spelled hansen wrong there, pal  
is no one up yet  
boring.

And it continued, mostly involving Evan or Alana sending pictures of homework or notes someone needed or missed. Sometimes, even Jared would pitch in with some information someone else sent him or with some funny video that had no real meaning besides being silly. 

The last anyone had spoken in the chat was the day after school let out for all of the seniors (which was, naturally, earlier than the other classmen), and it was Evan sending a picture of a tree he had seen. It was nothing too important, but.. he thought maybe his friends would appreciate it.

No one even responded to it. 

The last time he had seen everyone was during graduation, and that was it. He didn’t even go to the afterparty at Jared’s, because the whole experience was draining. Connor had given him a quick thumbs up as Evan and his mom left, and Zoe and Alana had waved at him. His whole group of friends stood near Jared’s car, ready to go. If Evan had known that was the last time he would’ve seen his friends, he would have gone to the damn graduation party and let his mom go home alone, no matter how insignificant he felt during it. 

Evan assumed people were busy. He was trying to get a job, for example. Maybe other people had done the same. He convinced himself of this, because the only other option was that no one remembered him outside of school or that his friends only existed out of pity or desperation to pass. Besides, his friends had all sworn to hang out over the summer. He applied for a job to distract himself from the possibility that he’d be all alone all summer until he went off to college to meet new people and try to make friends all over again, even though they probably wouldn’t stay because if high school was any indication, he was really shitty at making friends. But anyway. 

At one point in the first month of summer, he had gotten a text from Connor. 

CONNOR (11:16am MONDAY)  
hey all of us are hanging out saturday. you in? if you need a ride, jared can provide.  
EVAN (11:22am MONDAY)  
I’ll get a ride from my mom. What time are we meeting up?  
CONNOR (11:23am MONDAY)  
like 8? we’re going to the laser tag place.  
EVAN (11:26am MONDAY)  
I’ll be there! :D

Finally, an opportunity to hang out with people his age! He hadn’t seen any other person except his mom since school let out. Evan let his mom know about Saturday, and reminded her every day of the week. But Saturday… he forgot. And she did too, by default. She took a late shift and he missed the whole thing. 

He didn’t even bother texting anyone to pick him up. Why bother? By the time he realized he wasn’t going, it was 9 o’clock and they would all be there by then. That night, no texts came in. No hey, where are you?s or need a ride?s. 

Radio silence. 

His mom apologized up and down for forgetting. “There’s always next time!” she had reassured him. But he doubted there would be. Missing the first friend meetup was catastrophic, because then it meant it would repeat. People notice who isn’t there and marks them down as don’t invite, for whatever reason. He had one chance to secure his spot in his friend group over the summer and he missed it. 

On another occasion, Evan was walking home from an interview at the Pottery Barn. His whole body was shaking, and his hands were clammy. The interview had gone fine, but he had maybe stretched a few truths to seem more appealing. He had texted Jared about it, because Jared was his closest friend and would get it. 

EVAN (2:58pm FRIDAY)  
I think I got the job at Pottery Barn!  
JARED (3:05pm FRIDAY)  
cool  
EVAN (3:06pm FRIDAY)  
Yeah! I’m still a bit shaken up, I might have lied and said I was a people person. They asked and I just nodded and I didn’t want to correct them. I still haven’t stopped shaking.  
JARED (3:11pm FRIDAY)  
maybe dont lie next time so u dont get so fucked up afterwards lmao

And that was it. No empathy of any kind, just… don’t do it again. Evan went home, and lied down in bed for a solid two hours before he stopped shaking. His room was dark, and the low hum of his ceiling fan slowly lulled him into a calmer state of mind. During these two hours, he got an email saying he did get the job and that he’d need to come by sometime to fill some papers out. He had tuned it out, though. It only made him feel worse. 

He just wished someone, anyone, would talk to him. Any and all conversations had were either too brief to count, or made him feel worse. He actually even called Jared at some point, and they had talked for two whole hours. Of course, Jared did most of the talking, which was fine. It was about halfway to the 30 minute mark into the call that Evan had just stopped talking entirely. He was simply too drained to try. He had gone too long without interacting with other people, so what would once be a casual conversation over the phone turned into Evan suffering for two whole hours. 

He didn’t know why he even bothered. He reached a point where he wouldn’t even look at his phone, and just used his computer all day. He found comfort in music and video games, until he started working. Then his days became get up early, work, go home, stay up late, repeat. 

Some days he’d wake up craving to eat everything in the house, while others he didn’t even remember to eat food. His mom, of course, noticed all of this, and would regularly ask him if he had eaten. His answer was always the same. “No, I’m not hungry.” He would add something about her eating without him on days she was home for dinner. 

He accepted the fact that his life would forever be a cycle, only occasionally changing based on the time of year. School, work, fuck around for hours on end to pretend he was okay with his current state of living, repeat. That was his life come September. 

He was pathetic. He convinced himself of this after a while. The days seemed to blur together, stretching far too long or ending much too rapidly. Before he knew it, it was the middle of June. Only June? It seemed farfetched. He was sure it was already August or something. The only reason he had to leave the house was work. It was all he had energy for at this point of his life. All the furniture provided a sense of comfort, and if he ever needed a quick break, he could hide in a little nook created by the displays and calm down instead of stand around and wait for people to ask him where something was. 

In the end, he determined it was his problem that he was friendless. It was his and only his fault that he wanted to curl up and die on the floor of the local Pottery Barn. Because it seemed to him that good people who others wanted to hang out with wouldn’t have empty notifications and radio silence coming from all directions. 

It became clear to Evan that people only befriended him in school because they pitied him or wanted help with school. Why else? He didn’t provide a lot to any conversation. All he did was talk about trees. The one thing he was good at was messing up and being the butt of every single one of Jared’s jokes. Evan was technically an adult now. Maybe his friends realized that and gave him his first true taste of his lonesome adulthood. Or maybe they had grown to hate him or planned to just drop him the first chance they got. 

Regardless, he had made his own form of anxiety-ridden peace with his life.

It was going to be a long summer.


End file.
